1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of data retrieval and to a system for performing such a method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many software products have multiple sources for the metadata that they use. For example, the run-time metadata used by a business intelligence query tool may be drawn from a core repository stored in a database. However, some business intelligence tools have the capability to populate their core repository based on the contents of the core repository of an older version or of another product (for example a competitor's product) or based on metadata derived from the contents of a database's online dictionary.
However, a problem exists with this arrangement since the techniques used to retrieve data from these different sources of data are very different, and this results in inconsistent presentation of the data to the user and increase the complexity of the product. Furthermore, the data processing facilities that may be available for data from one of the sources may differ from those available to data from other sources.